Tuesday, 22 January 2013

Hot water and School. And Barack Obama

I was going to tell you about something really really interesting
and now I forgot completely what.

Sigh.

Anyway, apart from that thing I forgot, I wanted to share a
bright idea for saving water and
keeping warm.

Last summer I wrote some thoughts about saving water, and
after a few months went by I was encouraged by a friend on Facebook posting to
say she had been putting some of these into practice, and her family had a big
rebate on their water payments – about $150!

I am less keen on washing in cold water during the winter, especially first
thing in the morning when I’m still all warm from my nice cosy bed. But with all the winter rain and snow, we don’t
need the water saving up for the garden.
Plus, running the hot tap while the water gets warm takes longer in
winter, because the house and all the pipes are cold after the long night –
just in passing, non-UK friends; you do realise that here in England we are on the
same latitude as parts of Scandinavia?
That it gets dark by 4pm in winter here, and the sun doesn’t rise until
8am – we have l o n g cold
nights in winter.

So – dilemma! I don’t want to wash in
cold water. I don’t want to waste water. I have no use for the water running off while
the hot comes through. What to do?

Aha! Idea!

In the evening, I can make a hot drink and fill my very well
insulated hot water bottle, and save money on heating by reading books or using
my laptop to go online or watch TV, sitting in bed. Then in the morning, I can take my
still-warm hot water bottle, and tip the water into the wash basin for my
morning wash. With a bit of forethought I
can even use the same water to flush the loo (I am back to water-closeting for
the winter too).

The water smells faintly rubbery when it’s first tipped into the basin, but the
fragrance of my lovely organic handmade soap soon overcomes.

I am very pleased with this new plan.

On a completely different topic, I don’t understand why
schools have to be so all-or-nothing about attendance. Colleges and universities allow people to
sign up for specific courses – why can’t schools?

Where I live, the tiny children usually start on a half-day,
and are fine with that. Then it all goes
mad and they have to go all day and every day until they’re eighteen, not just
attending all day long but filling up evenings and weekends with homework. And usually they are sent home for the
holidays with a pile of assignments to complete for the start of the new term.

I think it would be great if school participation could be a
pick’n’mix system. Children could sign
up to the classes they were interested in with the teachers they liked. Priority might be given to the full-time
students, but home-schoolers or part-time students could come along as much or
as little as they wished. I think many
children might enjoy going to school just in the mornings and with no homework.
I just can’t see what would be wrong with that.

This morning over breakfast, we were talking about falling
asleep. Since I’ve been studying Eckhart
Tolle’s teaching, I’ve become much more aware of my internal thoughtscape, and
my lucid dreaming has very much increased.
Last night I was snoring in my sleep, and I registered that inside my
head, my consciousness shrunk back from the external world, snoring sounds
different from when awake. I knew I was
asleep, knew I was aware of the snoring, but also knew I was withdrawn to some
extent from the regular perceptions of my waking self. How cool is that^

So at breakfast time we were chatting about this, and Hebe
started talking about falling asleep – about it being like a computer shutting
down. She demonstrated what it feels
like, like this:

Then we got onto talking about work deadlines, and working
late while simultaneously falling asleep, experiencing that repeated shutting
down. Hebe said she usually just goes to
bed and gets up earlier – then she remembered sometimes starting school essays
at ten o’clock at night – necessitated by having just so much homework to do.

And it seems to me that this is a real failing of school
education – there is a great deal of input and output, but almost no time at
all for the reflection, the digestion of ideas, which results in really good
quality work. In my work as an adult, as
a writer, I should say the bulk of it is done while I am to all appearances
doing absolutely nothing – drifting, being, wondering, imagining, roaming the
internet looking at pictures and films and reading articles, reading books,
sitting by the fire or by te sea, walking in the woods, just thinking.

Hebe pointed out that in school the main idea is that you
regurgitate the data the teacher has just passed on. Sure.
But what’s the point of that?
This is what we have reference books for!

All creative thought, ingenious imaginative original thought,
needs time without pressure to wonder and reflect.

Changing the subject again - I loved Barack Obama's second term inauguration speech. I've only read the transcript - it's here - but I'm going to look for a video of it to watch and listen to.

School. I do see your point, but think it wouldn't work for the majority simply because I suspect the purpose of school is not really to educate or enlighten children. The purpose of school is to firstly contain children for several hours a daywhile their parents are elsewhere. Secondly to prepare the children to be obedient little sheep who will trot off to the factory or the cashier's station at Stuffmart and slave away for the betterment of our expansion based economy. We need a great many not too bright people who are willing to do the same dull thing over and over for hours on end and who are not questioning the value of that but are just glad to have a job. And glad to buy more and more stuff.

I know, I'm quite cynical about this.

My own kids got a mix of homeschool and public school. The older pair homeschooled till age 14/13 then did high school and on to work. I have it on good authority that they both loathed high school. They are quite bright and have learned an amazing amount of things outside of school of course. The younger pair entered public school at ages 8/6 and left by their own choice at ages 10/8 to become autodidacts. Half a dozen years later Middle Child went on to college, graduated nicely and teaches music in a private school. Youngest child went to work in retail at age 16 and worked her way through the ranks. She happily manages a shop with her "third grade education".

People need unregimented time to become themselves. The unrelenting schedule of most school systems disallows that.

On the one hand I think children need most to have a great deal of freedom and interested adults to help them learn the things that interest them.

On the other hand I realize as stinky as I think school is, there are children for whom it is heaps better than their home life. So the whole thing for me remains a perpetual dilemma.

Sigh.

I shall take the advice of your church child and endeavor to keep hat red out of my thinking.

Around here, some homeschooled students do take a few classes at the public school. This seems to be left up to the discretion of each school district. Some are open to it, some not.

Our son has never gone full days. Early on, he had lots of therapies in the afternoons, then we had some skill development that needed to be worked on outside of school, intensively. Also, his stamina has not been up to full days, much of the time.

The benefit of school is mostly social, and getting some exercise, at this point,in the mornings.

Great minds think alike, Ember! I've just moved into the large bedroom again, having redecorated and got rid of everything that had bad memories, and am instigating a 'jug and bowl' type washstand. For warm water in the morning I was also thinking of my hot water bottle, or maybe a flask with the rest of the kettle water from making the hot water bottle at night.

Now, school....hmmm....I could go on and on about this!! One of the reasons I left Primary teaching is the relentless pressure on children to reach 'targets', regardless of individual children's needs, and pressure on teachers to make sure a certain percentage of the class reach those blessed targets too. I would scrap all that, put children in much smaller classes, in much smaller schools, and concentrate on each child's learning journey. Why on earth do we herd our children into these huge institutions? How can a teacher possibly deal with all those needs properly? You end up either hurrying the whole class on, leaving the slower learners further and further behind and more and more prone to behaviour problems, or you slow down which makes the faster learners bored and incurs the Wrath Of Ofsted.

I'd better stop there. The way He did it may have been tough, but I'm so glad God got me out of teaching!

Hi Pilgrim - that's interesting! Sounds as though you have a good balance. As to the social side of school, though it can be a bit of a bear garden, my children's grandfather (a headmaster) observed that children always find their way to others like themselves, and we found that to be true.

Hawthorne - I love those jug and bowl stands - the enamel ones! Of course any table, jug, bowl will do fine! Plastic (though hardly beautiful!) is handy because it's light to carry with water in. I don't know why we ever set off on this runaway train of indoor plumbing - jugs, bowls, thermos flasks, commodes all worked just fine and left a much more flexible home. Bring back the fireplaces and scrap the plumbing, say I!

Having lived with a commode & the dunny truck...um, no. I like my indoor dunny with the shiny push button. ☺

School ~ we've done that just about every way possible. When I was teaching still the grade 1 teacher was happy to have Cait in her class for those couple of hours. After the first couple of times Cait didn't enjoy it so she stayed home with her dad & I worried all morning that she was inventing diabolical things her dad wasn't noticing. Later she did choir, band & sport with the school but her academics always at home with me then that too stopped & her music moved into more professional realms. I have great respect for teachers & frankly the government should get out of education & let the teachers get on with it. Stopping. You really don't want to hear my rant on our education system.

As for water ~ I am extremely grateful I live in a climate where my pipes never freeze but I have something of a gypsy mentality: only running water is clean water. I try but the sight of standing water for bathing or washing makes me feel icky. Obviously I am primitive enough to want to hang my washing in a net bag in the middle of a fast flowing stream.

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‘Let us pass through your country. We will stay on the main road; we will not turn aside to the right or to the left. Sell us food to eat and water to drink for their price in silver. Only let us pass through on foot until we cross the Jordan into the land the Lord our God is giving us.’

(Deuteronomy 2.27-28, 29b NIV UK)

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